


October

by Chiomi



Series: Get Sharp [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Gen, POV Lydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 19,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia wants answers, and if no one will give them to her, she'll hunt them down herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Lydia had no particular affinity for fire. She’d learned how to make the self-igniting Molotov cocktails because she’d loved zombie movies for ages, and weaponizing the Chemistry room at school had featured in most of her apocalypse survival scenarios.  
  
She’d stopped liking zombies on her sixteenth birthday.  
  
When she knew, when she was planning to help break Boyd and that slut out, she’d picked a flamethrower for a number of reasons. First among them was that it gave her both some range and also area of effect: she could hold a number of werewolves away from her. She was too young to legally obtain a gun, and had no idea how to obtain one illegally. She could probably find out, but she had no familiarity with one, and, if the past few months were any indication, was probably going to end up at a lot of crime scenes with the Sheriff’s son. A gun did not seem like a good idea. Allison got her a taser, of course, but that needed time to recharge. Allison got her a knife, too, but Lydia had already been up close and personal with one alpha, and did not actually need to lose another nine pounds by losing her mind again if she weren’t fast enough. Allison tried to get Lydia to use a bow, too, but that required too much precision. Lydia would be able to acquire proficiency in time, but she did not have time, because they were moving out soon.  
  
Lydia picked a flamethrower because she knew how to build one with items easily acquired with stops at a sporting goods store, a hardware store, and a gas station, and she could rig it up to fit perfectly.  
  
Lydia picked a flamethrower because, even though she didn’t have any particularly strong feelings about fire, Peter _loathed_ it.


	2. October 1 (Monday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters for this fic are likely to be pretty short, but I'm pretty sure they'll be more frequent, as well, so if you prefer your fic in bigger chunks, come back every couple of updates.

In the middle of History, Stiles suddenly jerks into perfect posture and stares at Lydia. It’s odd, even for Stiles. As soon as the bell rings, he shoves everything haphazardly in his bag, his eyes on her the whole time. She waits for him, eyeing the clock impatiently. He’s useful, and a large part of the reason no one she likes has died recently, but that’s no reason to coddle him.  
  
“I just remembered,” he says urgently. “Sorry it took so long to remember, but it’s been really busy and it wasn’t a big thing, but I think I found someone who’s like you.”  
  
“It wasn’t a big thing? Really? So glad to know that I rank that high on your list of priorities, Stiles.” She knows his little power-up has been distracting, but they’re trying to find out what species she is, and that is obviously far more important, or should be.  
  
“No, no, that’s not what I meant - just the ring lit up and it was the same color and then it went away and I don’t know what colours mean yet except for the werewolves, but that’s just because of sample size and I didn’t mean it wasn’t important, it is, it’s just that it was barely even an additional lead and I forgot and I’m sorry.”  
  
She purses her lips as she considers him. She could make him grovel more, and might enjoy that, but answers are a higher priority. “Who was it?”  
  
“A bouncer at Jungle. He just looked at us and let us right in - I think he could tell what Isaac was, at least. I don’t know his name or anything, but I can find out.”  
  
“Right, hurry up, then.” She starts for the door. Danny doesn’t usually beat them to the cafeteria, but they need to be able to grab him before he sits with anyone else. Research might be Stiles’ favourite pastime, but Danny is probably the fastest route to her answers.  
  
He trails behind her, asking questions, but the questions are irrelevant because he keeps up. The cafeteria is still mostly people in line for glop, including Danny, so Lydia joins him. Stiles drifts to the end of the line, because Stiles has no spine.  
  
Erica’s only a few people back from Danny, and she looks tired and stressed, which makes sense given that last night was the full moon. Still, she’d changed species partly to be hotter, and tried to either assault Scott or steal him from Allison, so Lydia smiles at her and asks, “Long night out with the boys, Erica?”  
  
Erica smiles right back, and she has to know that all of that red lipstick makes her look like a hooker. “You know how they can keep you up all night. Oh, though you might have forgotten, since your last boyfriend dumped you and then fled the state to get away from you.”  
  
That’s beyond the pale, because half the secrets in that sentence are for Erica’s benefit. Lydia narrows her eyes, and then remembers that looking put out will mean she’s lost. “At least I’ve had people who wanted to date me and not just - well, whatever you do.”  
  
Lydia rakes her eyes up and down Erica, then flips her hair and turns all her attention to Danny. Danny rolls his eyes at her, but that’s irrelevant, because she totally won. She and Danny chat inconsequentials while they wait to get to the front of the line, and then she follows him to an empty table.  
  
She opens with, “So, have they opened Jungle back up yet?”  
  
“Yeah, they only closed it for a couple of days. Everything was on the roof, anyway.”  
  
Stiles sets down his tray and flails into a chair. “Hey, guys!”  
  
Lydia smiles at him, because he has perfect timing. “I was just about to tell Danny about your epic crush on that bouncer at Jungle.”  
  
She watches a few expressions flit across his face, surprise and defeat and resignation, followed by an enthusiasm that looks real. “Yeah,” he says. “About five foot nine, brown eyes, maybe one seventy-five, medium build, thirty-ish, wearing a dark grey denim jacket and brown leather boots, though he probably won’t - I don’t know. He’s super hot. Yeah.”  
  
Stiles is incredibly unconvincing, and they might need to address that later. Lydia can't imagine any future that includes werewolves that doesn't also include reams of lying and being misdirectingly convincing to a number of people, and she's not going to be the only one covering their asses on that front. Lydia turns her smile on Danny. “Could you find out his name for us?”  
  
Danny looks at her, searching, then shrugs. “Sure. I’m going Thursday, and I’ll let you know.”  
  
Thursday isn’t now, isn’t handing her the answer she needs, but it’s still progress, so Lydia just says, “Thanks,” and finishes her lunch with a variety of small talk unrelated to Jungle.


	3. October 2 (Tuesday)

“Time to get up, Lydia!”

“Yes, mom.” Lydia finally settles on a skirt and takes her bundle of clothes to the bathroom to start getting ready. She’s been up since the alarm on her phone vibrated at six, trawling the internet for yet more highly unreliable information on the supernatural, but her mom doesn’t need to know. Not when the alarm is mostly in place so that, if she does anything dramatic when she’s asleep and not in control, she has time to clean it up so her mom doesn’t find out. She doesn’t think anything’s happened since the first time, when she woke up to ‘watch’ written on her mirror in eyeliner, but vigilance never seems like a bad idea.

She showers and does her hair and her face and her perfume and slips into the Badgely Mischka pumps she’d bought on the last shopping trip with Allison. She looks perfect and stylish and this is acceptable. Even if she’s still trailing a history of people spiking her punch with hallucinogens and wandering lost for days, she’s trailing it behind perfection. Nothing’s gone quite back to normal: Lydia spent the summer largely trying to save lives, so blowing off the couple parties she’d been invited to was only to be expected, but she hasn’t been invited to a single party since the start of school. That’s something she intends to remedy, even if it means falling back on the plan to make Erica throw a party in early November.

“I need to leave for work in ten minutes,” her mom shouts up the stairs, which means it’ll be five until she’s shooting pointed looks at her watch.

Lydia slides her homework into her bag and grabs a jacket. “Coming!”

She makes herself a peanut butter and banana sandwich on whole wheat to take with her while her mom pours herself a second cup of coffee. Lydia could go for some coffee herself, but her mom never remembers to make enough even when Lydia asks, so she’ll just grab a soda at school. It had been a late night studying for the Calculus test today.

She packs up the sandwich, because her mom doesn’t like her eating in the car, and heads out the door to the garage. It’s scrupulously neat in the car, as always, and Lydia, as always, gets the urge to mess it up. She and Jackson had sex in the back seat, once, when her mom was asleep, before he’d given her a key. It had been hot.

She’s staring out the window blindly, at memory more than scenery, as they go down the driveway. The lawn catches her eye, because it’s a change in her environment. It takes her a moment to catch what’s different, but there’s a ring of darker grass and tiny white that looks like mushrooms growing in her front lawn. Lydia narrows her eyes at it, but then they’re out of the driveway and on the road and it’s something she’ll have to examine later.

Her mom drops her off, and Lydia walks in without making eye contact with anyone on the steps.

Calculus is first, and she saunters in on a cloud of arrogance. This has been one benefit of being outed as a freak at school: she signed up for the AP Calculus AB class in full knowledge that she’d be the only junior taking it but that it couldn’t actually make her seem any weirder. It’ll be worth it in the end, because Stiles and Danny won’t be able to touch her GPA. She’s taking enough more AP classes than them that they’ll be stuck in her dust fighting over Salutatorian.

She slides into a seat in the front row, and is one of the last ones in before the bell rings.

The teacher closes the door firmly and says, “Good morning, math enthusiasts. Books away, calculators out, number 2 pencils at the ready: it’s test time!”

She passes out the booklets, and Lydia gets to work. She finishes first, as usual, and plays games on her phone until the bell rings. She’s confident on all of her answers, which was the point of studying.

The rest of the morning is irrelevant, because she only talks to two non-werewolves, and it’s school-related with both of them. When History is over and she and Stiles are walking to lunch, she says, “I don’t want to wait for a maybe. Isn’t there something you can do with all your new woo-woo powers?”

Stiles looks at her and blinks. “Not that I know of. It’s just a boost to what was there before, not any new tricks.”

Lydia shoots him a withering glare. “Ask Deaton.”

“I’m still -” Stiles stops spewing irrelevancies and makes his angry face. It’s almost cute. “Fine. I’ll talk to him this afternoon.”

Lydia smiles, and sits with the werewolves at lunch.


	4. October 3 (Wednesday)

Stiles is more frenetic than usual when he comes into History, and nods at Lydia like he’s trying to communicate something polysyllabic. She rolls her eyes at him, because she doesn’t actually speak spastic facial tics and has no idea what he’s trying to convey.

The bell rings and he takes his seat, and they sit through fifty minutes of the rise of the black power movement. As soon as the bell rings for lunch, he’s up and bolting to her seat. “So, Deaton wasn’t any help, said the ring he already gave me was the best detector he had and anything else would be a matter of my own creativity - I think he’s still pissed at me for bleeding all over things. But I was thinking about it and there’s no reason it shouldn’t react to the bestiary if I’m really working on it, right?”

He looks at her expectantly, like she has any idea. She translated the bestiary, she knows those words and what those people thought, but this isn’t intuitive to her the way it seems to be for Stiles. She purses her lips. “And? Did it work?”

He deflates visibly. “I haven’t tried yet. I thought you might actually want to be there for it.”

That’s actually something. She’d like to not have anyone find out before she does. Lydia tosses her hair behind her shoulder and says, “Fine. Your house, after school. You’re giving me a ride.”

She’s done with him until then, which he seems to pick up on, because he doesn’t try to join her when she sits with Allison for lunch.

After school, she heads to the parking lot to wait for him. Wednesday lacrosse practices are in the morning, so he’ll have no excuse if he keeps her waiting. He doesn’t, probably because he knows what’s good for him, and jogs up before she’s settled on whether to look bored or glare.

He unlocks her side first, and holds the door for her. The interior isn’t dirty, precisely, but she’s heard from Allison how often Stiles has transported injured werewolves, and Lydia does not want whatever freaky blood-borne pathogens they might carry that Stiles wouldn’t have cleaned adequately. She doesn’t settle back against the seat, even after she buckles herself in.

He drives barely above the speed limit, boringly slow, and she examines her cuticles to broadcast how bored she is. When they get there, he scrambles around the door to let her out, which is kind of nice, actually: it had taken her nearly two weeks to train Jackson to do the same thing, after he got his license.

She discards the idea almost as soon as it occurs to her. Stiles is nearly as smart as her, and devoted, but both dates she’s gone on with him have ended with werewolf trauma. If she’s going to tangle more with the supernatural, it’s going to stay on her terms and not be a matter of being dragged in by proximity. And her terms include knowing what the hell she is.

His room is messy, but at least the chair is clear. She sits down in it as Stiles hovers. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“Can we get to business?” She raises her eyebrows at him.

He runs a hand over his head and says, “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right back.”

He comes back shortly with another chair and sets it next to her and opens his computer and wakes it up. He has the database already open in a tab, and she has to throw a hand up to stop him. “Log out. I’m still on lockdown.”

He looks at her, and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but then apparently thinks better of it in the face of her glare. Precautions and control are important. He logs out. She puts in her own login information and tells Chrome not to remember them. That gives them access to stripped down information, far fewer ways to kill things, and none of Stiles’ notes. Thankfully her own notes are mostly about possible translation ambiguities, and are not on the same scale as Stiles’ aggregate research notes. Thankfully, too, her memory is not eidetic, and even if Peter has access to her brain again, he doesn’t have access to everything they know, nor even to Stiles’ plausibility rating scale for the creatures he’s found on Wikipedia.

She navigates so they’re looking at a master list of creatures, alphabetized. “Get to work.”

He looks down at his ring and his face goes distant and strangely adult, and the hair on the back of her neck stands up. Lydia scrapes together her best unimpressed face, because what else is she supposed to do in the face of witches she can’t set on fire?

The ring flares briefly green, then fades.

“So that’s the color we’re looking for?”

“Yeah - eventually we’ll need to categorize all of it, but I think they’re generally more complicated than just species, because Derek’s red and Isaac’s gold and - yeah, never mind, you don’t care. Okay, Aatxe.” The ring flickers a dull reddish cowhide color, just for a moment, and Stiles lights up like it’s Christmas. “Did you see that? It worked!”

Lydia tosses a lock of hair behind her shoulder. She wants answers, not to watch Stiles do magic tricks. “Not yet it didn’t.”

He deflates, and moves on to the next one. They get through the Bs and partway through the Cs and then the flickers are just fairy lights and Stiles is starting to go grey around the edges. None of them have been the correct color. When they get to the Cwn Annwn, the ring doesn’t even light up at all. “Are you out of juice already?”

“No, I just - fuck, maybe.” He rubs one hand on the back of his head furiously, like he’s trying to generate a charge.

There’s a tap on the window, and they both turn towards it. Derek Hale is perched on the roof, looking pissed off. Stiles pushes to his feet and slides the window open. “What’s up? Is everyone okay?”

The ring is lit a steady red, and Lydia is reminded suddenly that Stiles has ADHD and associated concentration issues. She’s been assuming that the prospect of doing something for her would likely override those, but either it doesn’t or this is operating on a different level. Huh.

“You were using magic.” Derek climbs in, and he’s kind of obscenely flexible. Lydia notes belatedly that she’s not the only one admiring his ass. Well, she certainly can’t fault his taste.

Stiles relaxes like his strings have been cut. “Well, yeah, obviously. We’re seeing if we can figure out what Lydia is by cross-checking the bestiary. You can feel that?”

Derek looks at him like he’s an idiot, and then looks at Lydia, then back at Stiles. “I could feel you tapping into the pack.”

“Ugh, just seeing things shouldn’t be this big huge deal.” Stiles presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Why does magic have to be like ninety percent arbitrary rules? It’s supposed to make things more awesome, but making blinky lights is harder than containing angry alpha werewolves and that’s just unfair.”

“I’ll take you home,” Derek says, looking at Lydia and making it sound like a statement of fact rather than an offer.

“What?” Stiles asks, looking back and forth between them.

Lydia isn’t done, she doesn’t have her answers, but if she pushes Stiles past what he can take he won’t be useful, so she purses her lips and stands abruptly. “Fine.”

“No, I can -”

“Shut up, Stiles. No more magic today.”

Stiles gets a mulish expression on his face and Derek levels a finger at him and Lydia just walks out of the room, because they are ridiculous children. Derek ends up joining her on the porch, and they walk almost in tandem to his car. She pauses, for a moment, to let him open the door for her, but he just glares at her as he goes to his own side of the car.

Lydia makes sure to slam the door when she closes it. Derek doesn’t say a word until they’re at the end of the street. “Don’t use his feelings to get him to hurt himself just because you want something.”

“Please, like I’m the only one in the car who does that.”

He looks at her incredulously, and a muscle tics in his jaw. He looks back at the road and guns the accelerator, obviously wanting her out of the car as fast as possible.


	5. October 4 (Thursday)

She wakes with dirt on her feet and in her sheets, but none on her floors.  
  
She wants to scream and throw things and take Peter apart piece by piece.  
  
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.  
  
Rising carefully, every movement controlled, she wipes her feet with her top sheet, then stands and strips the bed, dumping the sheets in her hamper. If there were ever a day for a Xanax and a movie marathon, this is it, but she has no obviously traumatic event as an excuse this time. So she showers and dresses and spends more time than usual controlling her hair.  
  
School is an annoyance. She talks to non-werewolves exclusively, just in case she smells like Peter and murder. She manages to encourage the rumour that Erica is a huge slut without claiming any kind of intimate knowledge of her activities by way of well-placed eyebrows and pauses while she gossips with Michelle after Calculus. She sits with Allison and Brien at lunch, and Stiles joins them. He’s apologetic, as he should be, but Danny’s already confirmed that he’s going to Jungle tonight, so she can afford to be magnanimous.  
  
She’ll have an answer, or at least a direction, tomorrow.


	6. October 5 (Friday)

At lunch on Friday, Lydia doesn’t bother with any attempt at subtlety, just grabs Stiles’ sleeve and drags him to sit with Danny. “Well?”

Danny leans forward like it’s some kind of secret. “You guys can never ask me how I found out.” He makes a face like it was distasteful.

Stiles’ eyes go wide, and he leans in, utterly titillated. “Yeah?”

“His name’s Todd. Todd Martin.” Danny flicks his eyes to Lydia.

Lydia can’t speak, can’t say anything in reply. She wishes people would stop lying to her. Digging out her phone, she texts her father furiously.

**What’s Uncle Todd’s number?**

He replies almost instantly, probably because he’s on lunch as well. **why?**

**I want to talk to him.**

**that’s not a good idea lydia**

**#?**

He replies with the number, and Lydia immediately fires off a text to her uncle.

**Hi, you probably don’t remember me, but I’m your niece Lydia. I wanted to reconnect. Would you like to have lunch tomorrow?**

She puts her phone away with hands that shake with rage. It makes sense, of course, that this is hereditary. It’s the only thing that makes sense. She’d thought it recessive, though, as no one had mentioned anything, or a minor genetic blip, a particular twist of DNA that happened to grant immunity to werewolf bites and kanima venom without expressing itself in any other obvious ways. But just immunity didn’t explain being able to recognize human-shaped werewolves on sight, and unexpected recessive traits did not explain calm and resignation in the face of human-shaped werewolves.

Lunch is nearly over by the time her phone vibrates again.

**what a surprise! I’d love to - 1 at Veggie Heaven?**

**Sounds great. I’ll see you there.**

Lydia twists a strand of hair around her finger as she considers whether or not to bring a werewolf. This is family, so she shouldn’t need backup - but, well, it’s her family who’s lied to her for her entire life. It would be an aggressive move, might put Todd on the defensive.

It would cut through bullshit. She talks over whatever Stiles is rambling about now, says, “Remind Isaac that he’s taking me to lunch tomorrow.”

It’s an odd way to frame it, yeah, because if it’s a date then he should have her phone number. But Danny’s in no position to judge, and he barely gossips anyway, and Stiles will catch on.

Stiles whips around to look at her, and she idly catalogs the expressions on his ridiculously expressive face. Confusion, hurt that’s soothed away by understanding and anticipation. If she ever needs pocket money, she should play poker with him and Derek. “Yeah, sure thing. Hey, where are you guys going?”

“Veggie Heaven, but not until one, because I refuse to get out of bed any earlier.” Lydia glances over at the werewolf table, and Isaac is looking at her quizzically. At least he heard her. Stiles will clarify potential reasons why if Isaac actually needs them.

The bell rings, and she clears her tray and proceeds to AP French.


	7. October 6 (Saturday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like you all to know that my beta, AlwaysBoth, is the literal worst person in the world and won't stop laughing at me.
> 
> She also catches continuity errors that I don't even have in my notes, though, so I guess I'll keep her.

Isaac picks her up in the Camaro, which is acceptable. She likes sleek cars, and should probably have her parents buy her one so she doesn’t have to ask her mother for the keys when she wants to drive somewhere. Something in a bright colour, something noticeable, because small-town gossip is nearly as effective as GPS and could be handy if she ever joins the surprisingly large club of kidnapping victims.  
  
He’s wearing a button-down he looks uncomfortable in, and her mother assesses him at the door, casting a judgemental eye on his Converse. Lydia just hitches her purse to her elbow and walks out past both of them. There’s no need for awkward small talk when he’s picking her up for what is essentially guard duty.  
  
He doesn’t talk until they’re ensconced in the car. “Stiles says that this guy is related to you somehow?”  
  
“He’s my uncle. Estranged.” She takes out her compact to forestall any more conversational overtures.  
  
Isaac glances at her, then looks back at the road, keeps his hands at ten and two and checks all his lines of sight at intersections. They pull into the parking lot of the restaurant shortly after, and it’s almost exactly one. Lydia checks her lip gloss one last time and fluffs her hair and adjusts her stockings and generally wastes time while Isaac’s eyes sit steady on her. She pulls out her phone and sets her panic-dialing app to call Stiles and Allison, because they’ll bring in the big guns if things go wrong. Sadly, the app does not come with a supernatural bullshit button.  
  
At five minutes past she slips her compact back in her purse and opens the door. “Let’s go.”  
  
The host has asymmetrical hair and responds with boredom and gestured menus when Lydia says, “We’re here to meet someone.”  
  
Uncle Todd is sitting at a table in the sun, and goes from anticipatory to wary as soon as he spots Isaac. He looks at her, then, and she smiles, mouth closed but lips stretched wide. He stands, gestures at the two chairs opposite him. “Lydia, it’s good to see you again. It’s been a while - you’re so grown up.”  
  
She slides into a chair, setting her purse down by her feet. “Apparently running around with werewolves accelerates the maturation process, then.” She leans forward, conspiratorial. “I think it’s all the lying and close brushes with death.”  
  
His face goes a perfect shocked blank for just a moment, and then he’s grinning, handsome and sharp and glittering. “Your dad warned me not to tell you about family weirdness if you contacted me, but it sounds like you’ve found something better.”  
  
Lydia felt her eyebrows shoot up, completely independent of her will. Everyone she knows is completely insane, to think that dangerous werewolves are better than normal life.  
  
Their server comes to the table, someone Lydia vaguely recognizes from Calculus but has always written off as too much of a hippie to bother with. “Can I get you guys anything to drink?”  
  
“Raspberry lemon poppy-seed smoothie, please.”  
  
Todd looks down at the menu briefly, then orders a blueberry and almond milk smoothie. Isaac stares at the menu in bewildered distaste until he realizes it’s his turn, then says, “Uh, just water, thanks.”  
  
“I’ll be right back with those,” the server says, and disappears.  
  
“I want to know about the family weirdness, though, if that’s the reason I’m immune to an Alpha’s bite and kanima venom.”  
  
Todd flicks a glance at Isaac, no longer quite jocular.  
  
Lydia rolls her eyes and crosses her ankles. “Please, like I’d bring him if he were a threat. Now spill.”  
  
In what’s either impressive planning or the worst timing in the world, the bell dings behind them and Todd freezes. Lydia turns to look, and there’s her dad, outrage on his face and a woman who can’t be older than twenty-five on his arm. She narrows her eyes at him, and Isaac is tense beside her.  
  
“Lydia,” he says, quiet like it’s just for her and not her two companions. “I thought I told you this was a bad idea.”  
  
She tosses her head, letting her hair settle over her shoulder. “I disagreed.”  
  
“I’ll just go,” Todd says quietly, scooting back his chair and taking out his wallet.  
  
“I’m not done with you,” Lydia snaps, and belatedly notices that Isaac is twisting his hands nervously. It’s going to be annoying if her leather-clad muscle has a meltdown over a family squabble.  
  
Todd falters, but looks again at Lydia’s dad and thumbs out a twenty and sets it on the table and flees.  
  
Lydia glares at her father and then puts both hands on the table and shoves back. She grabs her purse and Isaac’s arm and says, “Fine, we’re gone.”  
  
Isaac doesn’t talk until they’re in the car again. “Couldn’t we have just asked your dad?”  
  
“He didn’t even blink when he saw you. Whatever runs in the family, he hasn’t got it, or not enough of it - or, who knows, maybe he just hasn’t spent way too much time around werewolves.” She makes a high, frustrated noise, letting off steam. Uncle Todd is the answer, has the answers, and they were right there. “Let’s hit a drive-thru.”  
  
“Which one?”  
  
“Anything that serves a fucking chicken sandwich.” She stares out the window, fuming, as Isaac drives. Texting will likely be useless. It only takes a few blocks before she pulls out her phone anyway, because she has to try. She sends her demand, and stares furiously at her phone until they’re pulled up to order. “Just a chicken sandwich,” she says in response to Isaac’s inquisitive stare.  
  
She digs out her debit card and hands it to him before they reach the first window, because paying for his lunch is the least she can do. He looks at her, but doesn’t say anything, and takes the card to pass to the cashier. They collect their food, and Lydia sighs and tells Isaac to drive her home. She doesn’t particularly want to spend the rest of her day with werewolves, not when she still can’t get any answers.  
  
He drops her off and doesn’t come to the door and that’s fine, because he was backup and not a date, no matter what she’ll let her mother think. She puts her sandwich on a plate and pours herself a glass of lemonade and eats lunch in the kitchen, and then takes Prada for a walk. She takes him out the back gate, because fuck Peter Hale and his mind games, and then comes back and finishes her homework and polishes her paper on Valerie Solanas that isn’t due for another week and then opens Perseus to start reading Theogony, because that’s next on her list and she’ll be damned if she lets Homeric Greek beat her when nothing else has.  
  
Her uncle doesn’t reply to her text.


	8. October 7 (Sunday)

Lydia spends Sunday doing laundry and finishing _Theogony_. She texts her uncle six times, and calls twice. He doesn’t pick up or reply.  
  
There had been a time when she would have been on a date or out with friends on a Sunday, but that was before her life turned into a supernatural shit show. As she takes a basket of laundry upstairs she glares at the ring of mushrooms still on the front lawn, because they’re probably harbingers of something awful, too. She should make Stiles come over and figure out what they are and get rid of them, but that would be a revelation of weakness.  
  
Instead, she puts away her clothes and curls up on her bed and watches NOVA on her laptop.


	9. October 8 (Monday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allison’s birthday is almost definitely late January or early February (based on the winter formal being February 17th and her birthday being before that, and the whole first season being like three months long), but I’m taking liberties.

When she walks into school Monday, Danny’s manning a table for the Student Council. She stops and looks at him and raises an eyebrow, and he raises a clipboard in response. “What are you recruiting people to now?”  
  
Danny shrugs, rolls his eyes. “Dance committee - we somehow need half a dozen people to drape the gym in streamers, and five months to plan the first one.”   
  
She grabs the clipboard and snaps her fingers at him for a pen. Even if she’s not going to parties much (at all) anymore, she can be involved in something social. Besides, they’re juniors now, and she needs something to put on her college applications as an extracurricular besides ‘werewolves.’  
  
It all feels very bloodless now - not that her life is bloodless, her life has taken a distinctly bloodier turn in recent months. But trying to reclaim her place socially, calculating a year in advance the things she’ll put in personal essays: it pales next to brainwashing and resurrections. But her machinations feel bloodless because Jackson’s taken her still-beating heart with him on his fucking road trip, and all that’s left is sludge.  
  
The bell rings, and she goes to Calculus, where the tests are handed back and gone over. She got full points, and the curve starts with her, and her classmates are screwed over, because she’s apparently the only one who got a perfect mark.  
  
She flicks her hair back and smirks at a senior who’s giving her stink-eye.  
  
After History, she walks with Stiles to the cafeteria. He doesn’t ask about her uncle, so she presumes Isaac already told him. He’s getting freakily plugged into the werewolf network, enough that it’s silly he hasn’t asked for the bite yet. Well, maybe not, given that Beacon Hills has a four in six record of bites working properly. She’d have deprived Jackson of sex for ages if their lacrosse record had been as bad.  
  
She sits with Allison at lunch, and the whole relationship whatever with Brien looks like it’s paying off: Allison actually smiles like she means it, sometimes. She just needs the constant reminder that she doesn’t need to go into the family business, and Brien and his unimaginative movie dates apparently provide that.  
  
“So, I was thinking barbecue at the Preserve for your birthday, up at picnic point. Plenty of burgers, chips, whatever, and people can just wander in and out.”  
  
Allison curls into herself and says, “I - Lydia, we really don’t need to do anything for my birthday.”  
  
Lydia looks at Allison in disbelief, then rolls her eyes. “Of course we do.” Allison’s neurosis about people finding out how old she is will not be a bar to celebrating reaching her majority. “Don’t we, Brien?”  
  
“Uh,” he says, smart enough to know that his opinion here doesn’t matter except to get him in trouble.  
  
Allison shoots her a sharp look, and Lydia smiles. “I won’t even need to decorate your locker, if we’re having a barbecue. Everything super casual, so your family friends and your school friends don’t even need to talk to each other if it’d be too awkward.”  
  
Allison’s eyes flick sideways, and Lydia follows her line of sight to where Scott’s sitting alone, his eyes on the pack of wolves at the next table. Lydia rolls her eyes, because Allison’s been good about not pining, but she’s still Allison, and it’s not like Lydia would forget. “Obviously.”  
  
Allison hunches, looks down, looks guiltily back up through her lashes. “Okay.”  
  
Lydia smirks, because she knew she’d win, and takes out her phone to make the Facebook event.


	10. October 9 (Tuesday)

Tuesdays she’s supposed to see her father: it’s in the custody agreement, and he takes off work early. He keeps to the schedule, even if she doesn’t: she knows because he brings it up at holidays, a passive-aggressive jab at her mother for not enforcing Lydia’s adherence.  
  
As soon as her mother is home, Lydia takes the keys. She doesn’t ask, because she’s already running later than she’d planned, and it annoys her. The car doesn’t accelerate as fast as Jackson’s Porsche, but driving lets off some of her ire.  
  
When she gets to her father’s house, she parks in the driveway next to a strange sedan. She gets out and doesn’t knock before she goes in, surprising her father and his date on the couch. “Get out. This is family night.”  
  
“Lydia!” her father exclaims.  
  
She looks at him, unimpressed.  
  
His date looks between the two of them, then leans over to kiss her father quickly on the cheek. “I’m going to go. Call me later.”  
  
Lydia moves farther inside, keeping her shoes on as she moves from the tiled area by the door down onto the soft white carpet of the living room. Her father’s date grabs her shoes from the shoe rack by the door and slips out. Lydia doesn’t say anything until she hears the car start. “You had no right to interrupt my lunch with Uncle Todd.”  
  
“He’s unstable, and you don’t need that kind of nonsense.”  
  
“Oh, so I’m so naive and trusting that I need to be protected from information just because I can’t handle it?” It’s like the line Jackson fed her, the lines Allison and Stiles fed her, and the rage that sets off is a typhoon.  
  
“Lydia -” Her father is standing, now, and his tone is placating.  
  
“Are you going to tell me the truth? Because if you’re not, right now, then I’ll go to him and I’ll make him tell me, and I can be a lot more persuasive than you can.”  
  
He’s angry, dismissive. “It’s idiotic and has nothing to do with you. You’ll never be involved, so you don’t need to know.”  
  
“As a matter of fucking fact -”  
  
“No!” He steps toward her. “Lydia, it’s completely irrelevant, and after those issues last semester, it’s not what you need to be focusing on.”  
  
“Oh, you’re calling being attacked and then hospitalized and then losing my mind and then having my birthday punch spiked with hallucinogens and then my boyfriend mistakenly pronounced dead ‘issues.’ Yes, that’s a completely adequate word for the trauma associated with them. And the thing is? No matter how traumatic they were, they did not interfere with my ability to process information, nor how susceptible I am to flights of credulous idiocy. So come up with better excuses or spill.” Lydia crosses her arms and looks at him the way she looks at people who’ve worn something tasteless: with utter scorn.  
  
He clenches his jaw. “No.”  
  
It’s a blow and a betrayal. Her own father is keeping secrets from her, secrets that she needs revealed. She can’t explain, either, can’t tell him she’s immune to the bite and to kanima venom and humans aren’t, they just aren’t, and she needs to know what she is. She can’t explain, because that’s not her secret to tell, and because without a werewolf here to prove it, he’d probably just think she was crazy, and she doesn’t think she could handle it. There are tears threatening to spill from her eyes, and that’s a betrayal of her body, because she’s just so furious at everything. She lifts her chin. “Fine. This was a wasted trip, then.”  
  
She stomps out before he can reply again, because she will not cry in front of him. She gets back in the car and drives shaking to the end of the block and around the corner before she pulls over. She’s in no shape to drive. She slams her open palm on the rim of the steering wheel and shrieks her frustration.  
  
That helps, a little, and she sits there and lets herself seethe for a moment before starting the car again and driving to the grocery store to pick up soda and juice, her contributions to Allison’s party.


	11. October 10 (Wednesday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’ve been reading the whole series, you know which song is playing at the party. It’s kind of Allison’s theme song.

In the morning there’s an email in her inbox from one of the Spanish teachers, saying that Thursday at four is going to be the first meeting of the dance committee. Lydia notes it in her phone calendar, which has been depressingly underpopulated since werewolves. At least the Facebook event for Allison’s birthday party has a decent number of people signed up to attend.  
  
School is dull, classwork barely a distraction from the fact that she’s really, really not talking to as many people during passing time. She doesn’t let on that there’s anything different, strides along with her head straight and her step sure.  
  
Lydia didn’t decorate Allison’s locker this year, and it looks like it’s not decorated at all. Allison will be happy about that, at least.  
  
She looks pretty and perky at lunch, at least, and smiles big at Stiles and bigger at Brien when they sit down. Stiles hands her a pudding cup. “I know you don’t like a big deal for your birthday, but everyone likes pudding, right?”  
  
“Aww, thanks.”  
  
Lydia catches Scott staring over at them wistfully, and glares at him until he looks at her, then away.  
  
The party doesn’t start until five, which works well, since it gives Lydia time to supervise the setup after school and then drive back to Allison’s and help her pick an outfit.  
  
When she knocks, it takes a moment for Allison to come open the door. She’s still wearing what she wore to school, which won’t do at all. Lydia looks her up and down and purses her lips and says, “Right, let’s get you ready.”  
  
She makes a beeline for Allison’s closet, and Allison trails behind her. “Can’t I just wear this? We’re just going to the Preserve.”  
  
Lydia looks at her incredulously. “It’s still your birthday party.” She flips through the hanging clothes, looking for the top she has in mind. She knows pretty much all of Allison’s wardrobe, at this point. “God, we need to go shopping again soon.” Locating her target, she pulls it out and tosses it at Allison. “This and your brown leather jacket. The jeans are fine.”  
  
Allison sighs and changes. “Scott’s going to be there?”  
  
“Yep.” Lydia studies her nails. “Brien’s barely a distraction at all.”  
  
Allison makes a strangled noise. “He’s really nice! He’s a great boyfriend.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
Allison flops to the floor, landing cross-legged. “I think I should break up with him.”  
  
“Do you really want to get back together with Scott?”  
  
“No? I don’t know. I love him, Lydia. I still do. It feels like I always will. But I don’t know if I could - I mean, after everything that happened?”  
  
“Well, don’t do anything today. You shouldn’t have to have unpleasant conversations on your birthday. Break up with Brien tomorrow.” She shrugs. “Or don’t. Hanging out with him seems to make you happy, when you’re not staring at Scott over his shoulder. Scott said he’d wait while you figured stuff out, right? He hasn’t show any signs of stopping. Let him wait.”  
  
Allison surges to her feet and in the same movement envelops Lydia in a hug. “You’re awful and you treat handbags better than you treat every boy who isn’t Jackson and you’re the best friend in the world.”  
  
Lydia pats her on the back. “We should go.”  
  
Allison pulls back and smiles crookedly. “Yeah, okay.”  
  
Lydia drives them both out to the Preserve and parks next to Stiles’ awful Jeep. Chris Argent is manning the grill, various underlings around him making themselves conspicuous by being too twenty-something and built for this party. The only Beacon Hills High students so far are Stiles and Robert from her English class, talking quietly by one of the coolers.  
  
Stiles lights up when he sees her, and she quirks an eyebrow at him, because he’s usually not quite so obvious. Stiles widens his eyes and twitches one of his hands to indicate their surroundings, and Lydia rolls her eyes. She’s asked Allison: the Argents don’t even bother hunting witches unless they’re doing something awful. Stiles won’t even rank as a target. He’s got nothing to worry about.   
  
Lydia sets her iPod on a dock on the picnic table and hits play. Florence and the Machine washes over them as Allison shoots her a quizzical look. “It’s not a party without music.”  
  
Smiling, Allison says, “It’s a barbecue in the woods. I hardly think it needs a soundtrack.”  
  
Lydia smiles back and points a finger at Allison. “And that is why you’re not in charge of planning.” She whirls and saunters over to the cooler, injecting herself between Robert and Stiles to grab a soda. “When’s everyone else getting here?”  
  
“Boyd’s got work, and so does Scott, but Isaac and Erica should be here soon - Isaac’s not working until later this week.”  
  
Why does that get her a meaningful look? She hates speaking in code. What does Isaac even do? Lydia sips her soda and raises her eyebrows at him. Stiles rolls his eyes and says, “Oh, hey, look, there they are now. Rob, do you know Erica? Let me introduce you.”  
  
Stiles introduces them as Isaac sets a wrapped present on the table and starts talking stiltedly to Allison. Rob looks more than happy to be left with Erica as Stiles comes back to talk to her. “I totally owe her ice cream for this, but it’s so tempting to pimp out all the hot werewolves.”  
  
Lydia rolls her eyes. “Any reason you couldn’t have texted me?”  
  
“Don’t want a log of us caring about her death,” Stiles says, and shrugs uncomfortably. “Died yesterday in the County jail. Natural causes, but they need to do an autopsy anyway, because she was young and apparently healthy.”  
  
Lydia takes a deep breath. “The same one -”  
  
“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I basically signed her death sentence, and it finally got around to coming in, but there’s no trace. Dad said her next of kin was a woman in San Francisco, and she wants the body buried here. Wired over the money to cover it, doesn’t want to come to town.”  
  
There’s still something tense and unfinished hanging in the air, and Lydia reaches out to touch his tense elbow. “You know it wasn’t your fault.”  
  
He doesn’t relax, doesn’t look at her, just looks out over the forest and sets his jaw. “I know I’m not the one who pulled the trigger. That doesn’t make it any less my fault.”  
  
He’s still and taut, and Lydia doesn’t like it. This is supposed to be a party, and they’re not thinking about unpleasant things at a party. So she changes tack, shrugs, and takes a sip of her soda. “I think if you’re taking personal responsibility for the actions of every rogue witch in California, the Halliwell’s might have something to say about it.”  
  
Stiles looks at her, and she keeps her face placid. He barks out a laugh. “Oh my God, Lydia, that show is so old.”  
  
“Go tell Derek to stop lurking in the treeline and give Allison her present.” She shoves him on the shoulder and doesn’t watch as his head snaps around, because the stuff on the grill smells delicious and she could really go for a hot dog.  
  
People and wolves trickle in and out over the next couple of hours, and Derek gives Allison a hefty but unwrapped gift card to a sporting goods store. Allison looks at him like he’s shot her with one of the arrows she’s inevitably going to buy. No one shoots Derek. Lydia is pretty sure she overhears him talking stiltedly to one of the hunters about protein shakes.  
  
Brien shows up late, but brings Allison art supplies wrapped prettily with store wrapping paper. They stay next to each other for the rest of the evening, even as Allison spends the half hour Scott’s there staring at him, and all the time after he leaves mooning after him.  
  
At moonrise, Lydia hears faint music from the woods. But they’re packing up by then, so she just cranks her iPod and helps gather recycling.


	12. October 11 (Thursday)

The ring of mushrooms in the front yard is sparkling. Lydia resolutely does not comment on it as they go past. Norah compliments her dress after Calculus, and Lydia smiles and compliments her earrings, because social currency increases based on frequency of interactions, not direction of compliments. It doesn’t hurt that they’re really nice earrings.  
  
She works on Homeric Greek when she gets home, and contemplates hitting her father with a car.


	13. October 12 (Friday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, who's already sure they know what Lydia is?

There are flowers in her bed when she wakes up, scattered stemless things crushed by the blankets. Lydia cleans as much as she can, and then opens her laptop and Googles her uncle’s address. There can’t be more than one Todd Martin in Beacon Hills.  
  
There isn’t, so she puts the address in her phone. She’ll go there after school and demand answers, which necessitates both a ride and someone threatening. Derek’s an option, as he’s kind of the whole package, but Lydia’s not sure he’ll be willing to play backup to her family drama, and doesn’t want to test it and have her lack of influence proven. Scott has access to his mom’s car and is also a werewolf, but he’s just a giant puppy. Stiles has a gun now, but that’s not quite the tone of threat she wants. Jackson would be perfect for this.  
  
So Stiles and a backup werewolf is what it’s going to have to be. Not Isaac, because it’ll be better if Todd thinks she’s involved with a pack rather than a single werewolf. Boyd, then.  
  
It’s tempting to skip school and do this, but it’s not urgent and he has to work late shifts anyway, so Lydia just texts Stiles and Boyd. By the time she’s arrived at school, Boyd has texted back his acquiescence.  
  
Stiles doesn’t text her, but he comes up to her before the start of History and asks, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”  
  
“Yes,” she says, and he nods and takes his seat.  
  
After, as has become almost natural, they walk to the cafeteria together. She sits with Allison, and he goes off with his wolves.  
  
After school, she meets him at his Jeep. Boyd’s there, too, and he slides easily into the backseat as they pile in. “Where to?”  
  
She gives him the address, and he starts driving. “So what’s the plan? Do we knock? Do I drive straight into the living room? How threatening are we being here?”  
  
Lydia stares straight ahead as she asks, because she knows what she’s asking and doesn’t want to watch his face. “I want you to bring your gun.”  
  
Since it’d hardly be the worst thing he’d ever done, and was far less likely to damage anything he held dear than driving his Jeep into a building had been, Lydia isn’t expecting the hard, fast, “No.”  
  
She frowns at him. “Why not?”  
  
“I won’t threaten a human with it. That’s not what it’s for.”  
  
“It’s not like he’s even really completely human.”  
  
“Still no.”  
  
“What the hell, Stiles? It’s not like I’m asking you to shoot him, just to menace him a little.” It’s not even really shouting when it’s to compensate for the noise inside the Jeep.  
  
“You don’t point a gun unless you intend to fire it. I’m not going to shoot your uncle. So the gun stays in the car.”  
  
“You -” she starts, furious.  
  
“What, am I not enough firepower for you?” asks Boyd, soft and amused and right in her ear.  
  
Lydia flops back against the seat. “Ugh. No, it’s fine.” Stiles’ being so stubbornly a cop’s kid has ruined her plans to make them all seem dangerous. ‘My werewolf friend and this kid who does magic tricks, no, really, I swear’ is much less intimidating than ‘my werewolf friend and my friend with the gun.’ She should have just asked Erica. The awful station wagon is more than made up for by the leather and lipstick and claws.  
  
They pull up to the house a few minutes later. There’s no car in the driveway, no lights visible in the house. Stiles turns off the Jeep, and the sudden lack of noise is an anticlimax. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”  
  
“We’ll knock.” She opens the door and slides out and pops the lever to let Boyd out.  
  
He leans his head out, but doesn’t climb out. “There are no heartbeats inside.”  
  
Lydia manages, through superhuman will, to not stamp her feet.


	14. October 13 (Saturday)

They go back early on Saturday, early enough that Lydia feels the need to bribe them both with large coffees and Boyd’s calm is edging towards surly. Stiles parks the Jeep behind the lone car in the driveway, close enough that there’ll be no maneuvering around it to drive away.

“There’s a heartbeat, right, Boyd?” She doesn’t bother repeating the gun conversation. She doesn’t like losing.

Boyd goes still a moment, gaze unfocused. “Yes. Just the one,” he adds after a beat.

Lydia steels herself, because this is going to be unpleasant, but less unpleasant than not knowing. She walks to the front door and rings the bell, aware of the two boys at her back. There’s a thud inside, loud enough that she can hear it with pathetic human ears, and she glances at Boyd.

“I think he just fell out of bed.”

She pushes the bell again, and waits impatiently for Todd to come to the door. He flings it open dramatically, shirtless and with his hair disheveled. Lydia smiles at him. “Can we come in?”

Todd looks from her to Boyd and Stiles and sighs. “Didn’t your dad say not to talk to me? He’s really, really not going to want me to talk you you.”

Lydia steps forward into his space, and he backs up automatically, and then they’re in. Boyd closes the door behind them, because Boyd has an appropriate sense of drama. “Yeah, that’s what he said. I didn’t like that answer, so I think you should tell me what I am.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He says it almost helplessly, like he’s reading from a script he thinks is terrible.

“Lie,” says Boyd.

Lydia twirls a lock of hair on her finger and tilts her head to the side. “Werewolves are so very useful, don’t you think?”

“Does your dad even know you’re hanging out with a witch and a werewolf pack?”

Lydia just stares at him. She doesn’t have snark or flippancy adequate to express how little her father cares about her or what she’s doing. There is not enough sarcasm in the world to dismiss the fact that he only came to visit her once in the hospital and still emphasize that she really does not give a shit what her father thinks at this point. So she stares, and Todd looks at her, then away.

“Fuck,” he says, and waves them farther in. “Come on, take a seat.”

Lydia sits primly in the middle of the couch, and the boys flank her. Todd throws himself into an armchair. “Okay, what do you know?”

“I know about werewolves and kanima and witches. I know I’m immune to the bite of an alpha werewolf and to kanima venom, but I was still able to be controlled by a dead werewolf. I don’t heal particularly fast, and I haven’t even been able to use mountain ash, not since the werewolf made me help resurrect him.”

Todd looks shocked and horrified.

“What I would like to know,” she says, putting a savage bite on it to stem the threatening tears as much as anything else, “is what I am.”

“Shit, kid, you’ve had a hell of a few years.”

“Nine months,” she corrects, just to watch his eyes widen.

He takes a deep breath. “We’re Aos Si - descended from Danu’s people? Technically, I guess, you’re only a quarter, which is why your dad has said he doesn’t want you involved. He’d rather be human,” he ends bitterly.

“I don’t know what that is,” Lydia says flatly.

“Oh. The Tuatha De Danann? Seriously? Fairies.”

There’s a pause that stretches into an awkward silence. Lydia can feel Stiles’ eyes on her. She can feel Boyd’s eyes on her. She suddenly, desperately, wants to be home with a Xanax and The Notebook. She reaches a detestably trembling hand up to her hair to smooth it away from her forehead. “He thought this wasn’t something I needed to know?”

Todd twitches forward, like he wants to comfort her. He doesn’t, though, doesn’t touch her. “It shouldn’t have mattered, usually it wouldn’t be relevant, I only ever go back on the Sabbats, and not even all of those.”

She has questions, she has legions of questions, but this is a starting point. This is a jumping-off point for research. She - okay. She’s a goddamn fairy. That can be unpacked later. “Go back where?”

“Underhill - Faerie. Your dad holds the gate, since he’s stronger than I am.”

“He threatened to not let you through if you told me?” Lydia knows her tone is incredulous even though she already knows the answer to the question.

Todd just looks at her.

She clenches her hands before they can start to shake in rage.

“We can fix that,” Stiles says, loose-limbed beside her.

Todd’s looks at him, and it’s only when his face sharpens that Lydia realizes how apologetic he’d been looking.

“We’ve got two weeks, right? If you can’t go back on your own, we’ll get you there.”

Todd bows his head and presses the palm of his hand to the blue tattoo low on his sternum. “I’d appreciate that. Lydia, you should - you could come with, meet the rest of your family.”

“I - maybe.” She’d been prepared, for this, goddammit. She has known she is not normal for a while, been prepared to accept that she’s probably not fully human. She processes information quickly and efficiently. She has taught herself half a dozen language. She is at sea, and desperately needs to retreat to somewhere she can put herself back together in private.

She will not waver so close to the edge of control in front of someone who’s been complicit in hiding so much from her. Secrets are the absolute worst. Lydia stands abruptly, and Boyd follows her. “I’m leaving now. Stiles?”

She leaves without looking behind her to see who’s trailing behind and stands next to the Jeep with her arms pressed tight to her ribs, wrapped around her diaphragm to remind her to breathe.

She lets Stiles drive her home and ignores his concerned look as she goes inside. Her mother is home, at the island in the kitchen with her laptop, but Lydia doesn’t want to deal with her, so she just walks past and up to her room. She boots up her computer and researches the Aos Si until her eyes start to burn and she wishes she’d started Old Irish instead of Homeric Greek.


	15. October 14 (Sunday)

Lydia wakes up at six again, and goes through her notes. They are as contradictory as they were last night: it wasn’t just fatigue. She finds a reasonably-rated translation of the Mythological Cycle and downloads it to her phone, as that seems the next step. She downloads the Mabinogion, too, because even though all the primary sources she’s found have been Irish, she’s going to see Stiles. He’s not as fast as her, but Allison had told her, when they were still talking about werewolves, that Stiles had figured out Scott’s change before Scott had. He’d been useful during dealing with the alpha pack, too, enough that she’s willing to take him as backup on this.

She doesn’t ask if she can take the car, just takes it, and stops in the Starbucks drivethrough to get herself a skinny caramel macchiato and Stiles a huge black coffee because he’s pathetic enough to let his hero-worship of his father affect his beverage choices.

In his driveway, she takes a moment to text Allison and suggest they hang out later, then gets out and knocks on the door. The Sheriff opens it a moment later, and while he’s not as unreasonably hot as Mr Argent, he’s got ridiculously kind eyes. “Hey, Sheriff Stilinski. I’m here for Stiles.”

“Come on in, Lydia. He’s in his room.” He gestures her inside, doesn’t even ask why she’s there, and she wishes that either of her parents were quite so understanding.

“Thanks,” she says, and ascends the stairs.

She knocks, because who the hell knows what he’s doing behind closed doors, and shoves the coffee at Stiles as soon as he opens the door. “I have ten pages of notes and I’m still working from translations. What do you have for me?”

“Ah, only a couple pages. Saturdays my dad takes me to the range, and then there’s a pack meeting, so I didn’t get started until almost midnight.”

“Right, give me your notes.” She snaps her fingers at him.

He retreats, opening his door further, and lets her in. He sets the coffee on his desk next to the computer and hands her a few sheets of loose paper, trading her for the notebook tucked under her arm. He sits, and reads, and she glances over his notes: general history, origins, notes about how to contain and combat, and that’s kind of insulting, really, that his first step would be looking up how to stop her if she goes on a murderous rampage.

She’s only built up to moderate irritation when it occurs to her that most of their mutual friends have gone on a murderous rampage at some point. It’s practical. It’s better than Derek just deciding to rip her throat out. She purses her lips and looks at him, waiting for him to finish reading.

Eventually, he puts the notes down. “Okay, so what are we looking for specifically? Because I don’t really have a direction.”

“Any powers I can expect to have, and what he meant by the rest of the family. I’m guessing it’s some kind of Court, but I want to know how one gets there and what I can expect once I’m there.”

Stiles nods slowly. “Okay, yeah, I can do that. You’ve got something, or should I see if I have any relevant books?”

“I am not reading Laurell K. Hamilton and calling it research, Stiles,” she says witheringly. “I brought a translation of the Mythological Cycle.”

He has the grace to blush. “Right.”

He turns back to the computer, and she brings up the book on her phone.

It’s over two hours later when he turns back to her, frustrated. “You would not believe how much bullshit is on the Internet.”

Lydia looks up from her phone. The Mythological Cycle is interesting, sure, but it’s not seeming like a particularly useful resource at the moment, and he’s been mumbling off and on the whole time, but not actively addressing her. “Yeah?”

“I’m getting mostly illusion-related abilities. Or maybe blood-magic and lovespells. And everything from, like, real minor stuff to god-like powers, and nothing is consistent. There’s obviously going to be individual variation, but everything’s really broad. I think power might be ley-line related, but nothing’s come out and said that, so . . .” he shrugs.

“Okay. What does it say about the otherworld bits?”

Stiles rubs a hand over the back of his head. “It says fairy rings - those rings of mushrooms like are growing in your yard - are a gateway to the barrows?”

“They’re a growth of mycelium is what they are.”

“And wolfsbane’s just a pretty flower. Look, there’s not much we have that’s reliable. We could slog through probably thousands of websites and neither of us have any way to tell fact from fiction for sure. You might want to ask Deaton.”

“Goddammit.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to have to talk to the resident witch-doctor. He’s creepy and never gives straight answers and going to his office upsets Prada.”

Stiles shakes his head. “I can keep looking, but I just don’t know how much use it’s going to be.”

Lydia heaves a sigh. “No, don’t bother. I suppose, if worst comes to worst, I can always talk to my uncle again. Now that I know, he’s not likely to keep lying to me, right?”

He looks at her and raises his eyebrows.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m going to go hang out with Allison. Let me know if you come up some more palatable avenues for me to pursue.”

Lydia throws out her empty cup in his wastebasket before she leaves for Allison’s. They’re going to need to work on their NHS paperwork. Now that she’s been outed as intelligent, she’s going to get some mileage out of it, and she’s going to bring Allison with her.


	16. October 15 (Monday)

She lets Prada out to do his business, feeds him breakfast, and then keeps him on her lap and feeds him tidbits of her toast.

Allison had seconded the recommendation to talk to Deaton, and she still doesn’t want to talk to her father or Todd, so that’s the plan for today. She’d have gone last night, but the clinic’s closed on Sundays. She’s read the Mythological Cycle, now, and read more online, but all the lore she’s seen hasn’t coalesced into any kind of list of abilities, and it kind of pisses her off. One of the few consistencies is weakness to iron, and, while it explains the persistent anemia, it’s not particularly useful. The dangerous people she knows rip people apart and cut them in half, and Lydia is reasonably certain that hemicorporectomy is fatal no matter the material used to inflict it.

She finishes breakfast and loads her plate in the dishwasher, keeping Prada in one arm so he doesn’t run off. She’s rubbing his ears when her mother comes down. “Hey, does Prada look a little peaky to you? He’s been sniffling all morning.”

“He looks fine.”

“I want to take him to the vet just in case. I’ll drop you off at work, okay?”

Her mother waffles over her coffee. “Did you make an appointment?”

“No, I figured I’d just wait until he had an opening. I don’t want to wait a few days to make an appointment, because what if he gets worse?”

“Well, don’t miss any more school than you need to.”

“Of course.”

The report card showing her better-than-perfect grades, ‘I’ll skip whenever I want’ scrawled on it in purple marker, has long since been taken down, but the message remains.

Lydia drops her mother off at work and drives to the clinic. There are only two other cars parked out front. She parks at the end of the small lot and grabs Prada’s carrier from the back. He’s shaking and attempting to prowl back and forth in the carrier.

Inside, a white woman in a ghastly paisley blouse is handing some paperwork to a brown woman with a lizard. She waits until the woman with the lizard has retreated to fill out the forms before she approaches the counter and sets Prada on it. “I don’t have an appointment, but I need to see Dr. Deaton. I’m willing to wait.”

She taps on the keyboard a moment. “He’s got an opening at ten, if you don’t mind waiting that long.”

Lydia smiles with her lips still together, and doesn’t bother to involve her eyes. “That sounds great.”

She takes a seat and sets Prada at her feet and takes out her phone. She still has the Mabinogion to get through, even if it’s the wrong country and likely useless.

A few other people trickle in and out as the hours tick past, and Deaton comes up to the front once and looks at her searchingly. He knows she knows, because of the alpha pack, but he can’t know what she’s here for.

Eventually, he has time for her, and she takes Prada back and sets him on the steel examination table. Dr Deaton starts opening the carrier. “What seems to be the issue?”

“What do you know about fairies?”

Deaton stills. “Ah.” His hands fall away from the carrier. He looks at her. “Not half, I think.”

“Quarter. I want to know what I can do and what I can expect to come after me.”

His eyes are steady on her, and she wonders what he is to be involved in all of this. “I have some books in my office that might be of use to you.”

“Okay. Can Prada stay here?”

“Whatever you’d like.” He opens the exam room door and gestures her through, then leads her to a small office filled with filing cabinets and a bookshelf, two shelves of which are iridescing and hard to look at.

Deaton touches both of them at the sides, and the iridescence falls away. “The Aos Si deal primarily in illusion, which is why they’re a part of Hidden People myths. Avoiding notice seems to be the most dominant skill, but here we are: this book talks about common attributes of Hidden People and this one talks about incidences of observed magic in 19th century Dublin.”

Lydia holds back a sarcastic “really?” and takes the books. Even tangents can lead back to the middle. “Neither of these is ‘how to be a fairy in ten simple steps.’”

He smiles. “No. Abilities are too individual for that. Most Aos Si deal in illusion, though some are able to predict death. Most Aos Si are susceptible to iron, though to different degrees. They should provide more context, though.”

“And this is all the help you can give me?” She’s trying not to be enraged about it, because this should be simple and straightforward and she should get her fucking answers, and it’s not, but at least it’s more information, more information that might be relevant.

Deaton shrugs minutely. “I’m afraid so. Whichever parent is half would presumably be able to tell you more.”

She smiles at him tightly. “Thanks for the books. I’ll bring them back when I’m done.”

He smiles back, small and entirely immune to her sharpness. “Take your time.”

He turns back to the bookshelf and touches it again, and the shelves start to shimmer. Lydia takes it as dismissal and turns to leave, since she should get to school. As her hand twists on the knob, Deaton says, “Stay safe.”

She doesn’t answer, just gathers Prada and drives him home. She’s not sure, for a moment, where to put the books, because they’re harder to hide than a database she only ever accesses in incognito windows on her locked laptop. She slides them into her bookshelf, eventually, as Prada trots in circles around the room. They’re least likely to be noticed there, hiding in plain sight.

Driving to school feels discordant, given that she’s not human and her best friend is a werewolf hunter and there are so many more important things she could be doing. She parks, and doesn’t bother going to the last few minutes of History, just signs in at the office and heads to the cafeteria. She’s first in line for an uninspired salad, and sits at a table alone.

She’s not expecting to be alone long, but she’s also not expecting Chantelle to slide in opposite her. Chantelle just starts unwrapping her sandwich like this isn’t anything unusual. “So, you’re on the dance committee?”

“Yeah.” Lydia watches her warily.

Chantelle launches into a battery of ideas about the dance, and her other friends trickle in to sit around them, and Allison hesitantly joins them. Lydia pilots the conversation like it’s a minefield, because she’s not quite sure what’s going on, but it works. It works, and she likes it.


	17. October 16 (Tuesday)

Lydia finishes her homework and Deaton’s books by two in the morning. That gives her time for four hours of sleep, and then all of Tuesday to decide what to do.

When she wakes up, her room is luminescing gently, pinpricks of color dancing on the walls. She throws her covers off and stomps to the bathroom to shower, because she is not dealing with this shit right now.

When she gets back, her room has returned to normal bar the occasional flash of light near the ceiling. She glares at them, then gets started adding some of the stuff she read to the database. Or, rather, to a queue that will prompt moderation from Stiles, because she is not supposed to have access for editing purposes while there remains a possibility of being mind-controlled. She hates having checks on herself, but at least now if she loses her mind it will be noted quickly, and she won’t have terrifying weeks of confusion and lost time.

She still might, because they don’t have any hard facts, just vagaries and suggestions and hints. It’s unacceptable.

She’s made up her mind by lunch, and sits with Chantelle again. She’d be worried about being pushy, but momentum in normalizing this is more important. They talk about books and films based on books and movies they’re excited for, and no one covertly mentions werewolves at all, which is an unexpectedly deep relief. She needs more normal in her life.

She enjoys the normal, and goes to her afternoon classes, and puts in her NHS paperwork after school. She’ll need to find a community service project to do, but she already has a few ideas about that.

After she’s done her homework, she takes Prada out for a long walk. He’s going to be sleeping in her room tonight, and that usually gets him wound up unless he’s properly tired out.

She sets a bowl of the cream her mother uses in coffee right in the path of the motion sensor light, and leaves her curtains open when she goes to sleep.


	18. October 17 (Wednesday)

The reflected light wakes Prada, who thinks the best response is to walk over Lydia towards the light. It’s effective as a wake-up call, and Lydia doesn’t waste any time peering out the window. She darts for the stairs and hurtles out the back door, and the two-foot thing lapping at the bowl freezes.

She crosses her arms. “I want answers.”

The brownie bends its strange-jointed limbs in something like a bow. “To what questions?”

“True answers, and when I’m satisfied you’ll get the rest of the cream, okay?”

It makes a fluid, acquiescent movement.

“What happens at the end of the month?” She’d worked out the rough timing from what Stiles had said, and wasn’t going to admit ignorance. It was Halloween, and All Saint’s Eve, and she didn’t know what else.

“It becomes a new month.”

She grits her teeth. “What important celebration happens at the end of this month?”

“Samhain, Lady.” It bares its teeth at her, in challenge more than a smile.

“What happens then?”

“All the folk under the mound feast the dead and count the to-be slaughtered and trade boons for apple wine.”

It sounds awful. “Do you know what I am?”

“Yes.”

“You know, complete answers will end this sooner for both of us, and I won’t need to get the iron. What am I?”

Its strange gold sclera glint in the light. “Fennid-fae, and weakened blood, but Danu’s nonetheless. A question in return: will you claim the ring and take your dogs a-hunting?”

What? Lydia vows to research this conversation in more depth. “Maybe.”

It doesn’t move, but everything about the brownie sharpens, and it doesn’t look harmless anymore. “Good. There’s been no rigfennid in these woods since Talia’s rejection, and the shadows pile deeper. You’ll need your glamour, child, though, more than those pots can give you. If you can’t even twist your will through the mirror, you’ll never hold the rings from the stronger of your blood and never take the Hunt.”

Glamour is the power of changing one’s appearance, and she’ll have to try with a mirror. And, of course, never mention to Stiles that he was right about the fairy rings. “How do I take control of the fairy rings?”

“You take them by taking them. Blood and blood to blood, and hold it hard with Spark and will. If it’s not instinct, the blood might be too faint and you’ll have challenged him for nought.”

Lydia resists the urge to get something on which to take notes. She’s not going to show weakness. “Thank you. I’m going to go get the rest of the cream, now. If I leave some out again, will you come and answer more questions?”

“‘Til after Samhain’s gates have closed, for the iron side is dull.”

She nods, and gets the rest of the cream. Her mother can just deal in the morning.

Back in her room, she draws the curtains and starts up her computer and starts trying to write down what the brownie said verbatim, because paraphrasing in this case could miss a lot of detail. It takes half an hour, and then she sleeps again, because there’s no point in enduring the reduced cognitive function that accompanies sleep deprivation over extended periods.

In the morning, her room is mundane and thoroughly itself. She doesn’t trust it. She revisits her notes and makes additional notes about possible meanings and further avenues of study: the dogs are almost definitely werewolves, but who the Hell is Talia?

The holes in her knowledge, now that they are pits and not canyons, threaten to swallow her, and she needs to close her computer and curl up on her bed and panic quietly for a while. Her mother will be waking her up in twenty minutes, and she needs to make sure her eyes aren’t puffy. It occurs to her, as she presses a cold compress to her eyes, that this is a kind of glamour.

She stares at herself in the mirror and tries to will something to happen, will her eyes less puffy and her skin clear. Nothing happens. She tries until her mother calls, “Lydia? Time to get up, sweetie.”

She stops, and washes her face and moisturizes and applies makeup.

School is unutterably dull, and she talks to Stiles briefly as they walk to the cafeteria, tells him she’ll send him her notes. She will, too, after she’s made more sense of them, because he’s been steady and informative even though he refused to take the gun. Him having complete information could only help people, like telling her about the kanima could have saved multiple lives.

She sits with Chantelle again, and it’s almost habit now, and no one looks at her like she doesn’t belong.

After school she streamlines her notes more and sends them to Stiles, and then tries to practice glamour in the mirror until her head aches.

 


	19. October 18 (Thursday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd apologize for the delay, but I posted porn in the interim. I'm also currently [up for auction](http://ao3auction.tumblr.com/chiomi), so you should come bid and give money to the OTW.

Thursday morning, her room is lit supernaturally again. They’re not sharp points of iridescence, though, but soft swirls, almost expectant in nature. Lydia watches them with narrowed eyes, and then grabs her phone.

**We’re doing dinner tomorrow. Taglietti’s, 7pm.**

She spends an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom perfecting her hair, not even pretending that it’s her mom’s wakeup call that gets her out of bed. She also tries, again, to will herself different, to have glamour work for her. It continues to do nothing except build a tension headache behind her eyes. When it’s on the verge of being painful enough to require her to take something, she snarls at herself in the mirror and stops. How is she supposed to take control of anything if she can’t exercise even a small measure of power?

She skips breakfast and texts Allison to pick her up a large caramel macchiato, because it’ll be a comfort to her. Allison meets her at her locker, a concerned look on her face and the coffee in her hand. “What’s up?”

Lydia resists the urge to snarl at her. No one shared information with her until it was all too late, isn’t she allowed to wait until she has a full picture? She smiles tightly and tosses her head to settle her hair over her shoulder. “Just a minor problem that I’m working on.”

Allison bites her lip, and the concern deepens. “You’ll let me know if it’s the kind of problem my dad could help with?”

Lydia gives serious consideration to throwing the coffee in Allison’s face. She is not an animal to be put down. She curbs the impulse before she’s had time to do more than twitch, and it’s because she remembers that Allison doesn’t know how hard she’s been hunting down answers. Allison already knows what she is, and lives in perpetual angst as she decides what to do with it, so it hadn’t seemed useful to tell her. “No, not yet.” Lydia makes herself smile. “I’ll let you know if that changes, though.”

She drinks her caramel-espresso happiness, and it makes things a little better, for all that she’ll need to see what Stiles knows for fact about the Wild Hunt. There’s nothing in the database, not yet, since Stiles seems to have started with Wikipedia’s list of legendary creatures, and the Hunt aren’t on it.

The dance committee meeting is deathly dull, but at least since it’s the second one they’re all trained to not speak over her.


	20. October 19 (Friday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://uswe.tumblr.com/).

Her father hadn’t texted back any kind of confirmation, but Lydia doesn’t let herself doubt that he’ll show up. He hasn’t failed to show up before, has been fastidious about attending her school events, and nothing’s changed. He’s been lying to her about who she is for her entire life, so nothing else should have changed now that she knows.

Still, she finds herself touching up her lip gloss almost obsessively before she walks into the restaurant promptly at seven. Her father is already sitting in a booth, and he rises as she marches up to the table. She smiles at him, deliberately unpleasant, and slides into her seat.

She puts her cards on the table right away, because he’s not going to be able to hide his reaction, hide the fact that he knows what she’ talking about. “Hi. So I caught a brownie earlier this week and it suggested that I recruit my werewolf friends to the Wild Hunt, and I figured asking you about that would be faster than waiting for my witch friend to get results from his collection of hunters’ bestiaries.”

It’s a Hell of a hand, and Lydia knows it. Their server has some kind of perfect dramatic timing, and shows up to take their drink order. She gets water, and her father orders a glass of house Merlot in a slightly burnt voice.

She leaves, and her father stares at the table. He swallows. “You’re only a quarter - it - they were never supposed to bother you.”

“Oh, yes, because lack of immediate concern excuses not telling me what species I am.” Movement in their section distracts her, and she glances over to see Stiles and Erica a few tables away. She rolls her eyes. “Aside from basic decency, it would have been useful in determining that my chronic anemia should not, in fact, be treated, and might have prevented an attempt on my life last spring.”

Her father pales further, and looks at her intently. “Someone tried to - who? I’ll kill them, I swear I will.”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” she snaps. “Given that at the time no one knew there was a legitimate reason for my immunity to a werewolf bite, it was logical. The point is that you lied to me systematically for years, and that is not okay. So tonight you are going to tell me what the Wild Hunt is, and how to control the Faerie rings, and how to work glamour. If your answers are thorough enough to be both satisfactory and useful, we can do this again.”

He reaches for her hand. “Lydia.”

She twitches out of the way, and grabs her menu. “What are you ordering?”

“I - the Hunt is dangerous. It wouldn’t be safe.”

“I think I’m going to have the chicken cacciatore.”

She can see Erica laugh at her table, and she’s glad that this is at least entertaining for someone. Her father backs down, and their server comes back and takes their order - chicken cacciatore for her, squash tortellini for him, and she’d never noticed before, but he never eats red meat, either. She feels a little stupid for not have noticing earlier, though it’s not like she had cause to wonder if she was really human before recent events.

As soon as their server is gone, this time leaving breadsticks in her wake, he starts up again. “They’re wild, Lydia. It’s not just a name, it’s the driving force - they don’t work for good or evil, but they hunt rule-breakers, or just things that look interesting that don’t serve a purpose. If they want - if you become part of the Hunt, you don’t ever come back from it, not really.”

Lydia looks at him unimpressed, because none of her life is the kind of thing one recovers from. She’ll be able to fake normal, eventually, because she isn’t Allison, expected to be a guerilla warleader, or Erica, who changed everything about herself on purpose and can’t go back. “Is murder required, or just expected?”

“Required,” he chokes out.

She nods, because that’s not really a surprise. “Now, the rings?”

“I just - I’m the oldest, and stronger than Todd. It’s - will and expectation, like an extra muscle. You don’t need to worry about them; I haven’t let anything through that could be dangerous, and I won’t.”

Lydia snorts inelegantly. “Believe me, that’s one of the last things I’m worried about. Between the local pack and the witches, anything actually bent on causing chaos would die quickly. I wouldn’t even need to do anything.”

At his expression, she leans forward. “You may think that you have a handle on everything, since you had information you withheld and you’ve been doing this longer, but you’re wrong. I had to deal with a ghost setting up shop in my head for months, and deal with it all alone, and I did, and I fought back when I wasn’t supposed to be able to, and, when I’m sure I can do it without repercussions, I’m going to kill him again, and make sure he stays dead. So your attempts at ‘protecting’ me are laughable at best.”

She sits back, and glances at Erica, because that wasn’t a declaration she’d made out loud before. Erica nods minimally, and it doesn’t look like she’s repeating it to Stiles. She won’t be completely alone against Peter, then. She might tell Stiles herself, later: she’s pretty sure he’ll help, since he helped kill Peter the first time. Her father twists, following her line of sight, and his eyes apparently light on Erica, because she stretches her face into an obscene lipstick smile.

Her father turns back to her. “Tell me what I can do to help you, to keep you safe. You’re not alone, Lydia, honey, you’re never alone.”

“No, I’m not, anymore. So how do I take control of the fairy rings?”

“You have to challenge whoever holds them - but let me do that, let me do something for you, at least.”

Their food arrives, then, and hers smells redolently of tomatoes.

Lydia takes a bite, chews contemplatively, and swallows. “What you can do for me is hold a challenge that I can win easily, and I’ll give them back to you in two years when I go to MIT.”

“You can’t -”

“I don’t feel like putting in effort to win it when I could be doing other things. Like learning glamour. How does that even work?”

“It’s - it’s like a muscle. You picture something, and then picture it differently, and shift it to the second image.” He looks helpless to explain it, like Stiles was helpless to explain how he could believe something hard enough to make it real.

It’s very frustrating. “And there’s some kind of party on Halloween?”

“Yes, Samhain. Like a New Year’s Eve party. If you wanted to come by the house, I could maybe have one or two of the more harmless members of the extended family -”

“No,” Lydia interrupts, swallowing only half-chewed food so she can cut his coddling short. “I’ll be controlling the rings then anyway, and I’m going there. The right time to wade into the shallow end would have been when I was a child. You should email me any relevant codes of conduct, but I’m going. Uncle Todd’s coming with me, just because he wants to go. Now, pick a mundane topic of conversation, because I’m done with this for tonight.”

He does as he’s told, even to the point of picking up Stiles and Erica’s tab. Lydia hopes that this will translate to setting up an easy challenge for control of the fairy rings, but doesn’t let herself count on it. She probably shouldn’t count on her family for anything, now.

When she gets home, the fairy ring is sparkling like the bookshelves in the animal clinic had, like it’s hiding something.


	21. October 20 (Saturday)

She wakes up to a text from Stiles. Given how little sleep she’d gotten, she has to wonder if he sleeps at all. He’s called another meeting, which is ridiculous. Nothing’s tried to kill them in nearly a month, and there’s no crisis on the horizon, either. His pack meeting is going to cut into the time Lydia had set aside for a pedicure and watching Igby Goes Down.

She texts back to ask if Allison is coming, because she’s never sure, in the sea of shifting loyalties that surround this melodrama, who Stiles considers ally enough to invite to anything.

There’s only a brief pause before a reply arrives.

**Up to you.**

She texts Allison immediately, then takes a moment to text Stiles that under no circumstances is Peter to be there. She does not want to be around him, and she should not be subjected to his presence.

The internal debate as to whether to get up or try to sleep more is decided in favour of stopping feeling so gross. Lydia had practiced glamour last night until she was utterly exhausted, getting only marginally better results than when she’d tried with no guidance at all.

Showering and doing her hair doesn’t take particularly long, so Lydia proceeds to finish her homework for the weekend and study more Gaelic until she hears her mother leave for her regular weekend lunch. Now it’s time to make herself a late brunch, take Prada for a walk, and watch a movie on Netflix on the big TV. She doesn’t like relaxing like this when there are people around, people who want things and expect things from her and of her.

Prada curls up on her feet, and she doesn’t bother kicking him off the couch. Lydia is almost used to spending time alone now, and she finds she likes it, when her mind is her own. A social life is worth the time invested, of course, but this interim, while she’s building it back up - now that she’s not in fear for her life, now that she knows it will recover - it’s nice. Like floating with your ears submerged, where the whole world is deliberately held at bay.

When the movie is over, it’s time to start over to Stiles’ house. She picks up Allison on the way, and restrains herself from commenting on the fact that she still wears far too much black. It’s worrying, in the way that a lot of things about Allison are a little worrying, but everything seems under control at the moment, and Lydia is busy addressing her own concerns.

Something else occurs to her on the drive over, and when Stiles pulls open the door, Lydia demands, “Is your dad here?”

“No, he’s working. Why”

“Why do we never have parties at your house? Your dad works all the time. It’d be perfect.”

“I don’t know, Lydia, maybe because my dad works all the time at the Sheriff’s department and it takes four minutes to get here from the station if he has the lights and sirens running?”

Lydia huffs out a breath. “So what’s this meeting about, anyway?”

Stiles looks at her disbelievingly. “Really?”

Allison stops at the door to the living room, going still enough to be distracting. “Hi, Scott.”

They really need to get their respective and collective acts together. Lydia scans the room, and Derek and Boyd and Erica are there, but no Isaac and no Peter and no Sheriff. No Melissa, either, but she’s never come to one of Stiles’ little meetings. Lydia perches on the edge of one of the chairs, crossing her ankles and setting her purse by her feet. “Yes, really, Stiles. I had plans.”

“So, hey, guys,” Stiles says, addressing the room at large. “Remember how we were all wondering what could cause immunity? Turns out Lydia’s one of the Aos Si. Yes, that’s right, we have our very own fairy princess. Questions?”

Lydia is livid. There was no need to tell all of them.

“How effectively can you use glamour?” Derek asks, eyebrows drawn down.

“Not very.” Lydia tosses her hair and throws him a vicious smile. “There’s no tactical application.”

Scott stops staring forlornly at Allison long enough to look at Lydia worriedly. “Is there anything going to be after you?”

“Anything that would is going to have to come through the fairy rings - which I’ll have control of by Wednesday.”

“That’s -” Derek pauses, searching for a word. “It’s serious.”

“So am I,” Lydia snaps, because they should all know by now that she is no mere decoration, she’s not just a pretty face or a math reference text. She stands. “If that was all?”

“There were - I have movies. For pack bonding?”

“That sounds like something you do with your pack, and I’m not in it, Stiles. See you in school.”

Allison rises slowly, like she’s not sure she wants to make this declaration but doesn’t want to miss her ride home. Scott isn’t so tentative. He juts out his chin and says, “I’ll catch a ride with you guys.”

Stiles looks forlorn as they sweep out.


	22. October 21 (Sunday)

Her mother wakes her by pushing open her bedroom door. Lydia wakes adrenaline-fueled, because nothing should be in her bedroom without her permission, and it’s disgruntling to have it just be her mother and not a threat that would warrant the reaction.

Presumptuously, she takes a seat at the edge of the bed. “I’m worried about you, honey.”

Lydia huffs in annoyance and sits up, trying to order her hair. “I can’t imagine why.”

“You never have friends over anymore, and after -”

There’s a particular inflection to ‘after’ that lets Lydia know her mother is talking about the formal last winter.

Her mother smooths a hand over the bedspread. “You’ve isolated yourself, and you’re spending time with - Scott and the Stilinski boy kidnapped Jackson last year, you can’t have forgotten. And the Argents . . .”

The cause of death for Gerard that made it to the paper was suicide. It’s a slow-building anger in her, but it’s on top of residual anger at Stiles for telling secrets that weren’t his to tell. “Jackson dropped the restraining order,” she snaps. “And Allison’s family is hardly her fault. None of us can help who we’re related to.”

It escalates, of course. Lydia’s mother eventually asks if she’s on drugs, and Lydia ends up accusing her mother of malicious hysteria.

It ends with Lydia taking an Ativan to drift away from this whole thing. She hates how messy her family makes her, how she comes undone and even her most vicious jabs are hampered by being seen as a child and not a person in her own right.

She lays in bed and rereads the Iliad and listens to music drift from the forest.


	23. October 22 (Monday)

Monday morning, Allison corners her by her locker, shoving a caramel macchiato into her hand. “You didn’t reply to any of my texts yesterday. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Aside from you being in no position to call me on keeping secrets, I wasn’t sure if your family would feel obligated to hunt me down.” She takes a sip as Allison’s face falls.

Allison reaches out as if to touch Lydia’s arm. Lydia stares at her hand until Allison pulls it back and tucks away some of her own hair. “You’re my best friend,” she says quietly.

“Would that make a difference?”

Allison looks down and away, and her voice is very small. “I asked my dad. We don’t hunt Fae.”

Lydia watches her, and then turns away. She has class to get to.


	24. October 23 (Tuesday)

Allison avoids her in school, though Lydia does find a still-hot venti caramel macchiato on the desk she usually uses in her first period. It’s still not okay, that Allison had to ask, but what’s a threat of lethal violence between friends?

Lydia drinks her macchiato angrily.

It sets the tone for the whole day, though she manages to keep conversation with Chantelle and her friends to an upbeat note.

She has the car today, at least, because she’d told her mother she intended to uphold the arrangement with her father this week. She drives right over after school, lets herself in, and does homework in his den until he gets in just after four-thirty. “Have you decided on a challenge?” she says in lieu of greeting.

“Mancala,” he replies.

“Fine. I get to go first.”

His mouth tightens, probably because he’d been the one to teach her about solved games, but he goes to get the board, not even bothering to take off his tie. He sets out the board, and starts setting it up. “You’re sure about this?”

“You don’t get to back out. I’ll give them back when I go to university, but right now this is not optional. If I’m going to be safe, I need to be the one guaranteeing that safety.”

The clack of the stones is loud in the silence. “You need to formally declare the challenge.”

“I, Lydia Martin, do formally challenge you for control of the fairy rings in Beacon Hills. Is that adequate?”

He sighs. “Yes.”

The game goes predictably: when Lydia had learned about solved games, she’d spent a week learning about perfect play. She hasn’t revisited that week much, but it comes back to her. She doesn’t speak while they play, and he doesn’t, either. When she’s won, there’s no wash of power, no bright lights, no flash. “That’s it?”

Her father watches her like she’s a stranger. “Yes. To open them, it’s just like glamour: you picture the other side and shift.”

“Fine.” She stands. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out on my own - it’s not like I’ve had guidance for anything else.”

She’s putting on her shoes when her father says, “Do you have to go? Can I at least take you out for dinner?”

Lydia cocks her head to the side, considering. “Fine.”


	25. October 24 (Wednesday)

Wednesday morning she changes her eyes to vivid purple, decides she likes it, and coordinates her outfit around it. The advent of colored contacts means she can go to school like this and see how long she can make it last: it’s not a lot of effort to hold it, but it’s some. Like maintaining good posture.

Her mother drops her off at school, and there’s another caramel macchiato waiting on her desk. Lydia rolls her eyes and drinks her drink and corners Allison after second period. “We’re okay, Allison.”

Allison smiles, dimpled and relieved. “Hey - your eyes.”

Lydia settles back against the lockers. “You like?”

“Is that -”

“Fantastically glamorous? Yes, definitely.” They smile at each other, and Lydia loops an arm through Allison’s as they start towards their next class.

The glamour’s still holding at lunch, and she enthuses to Chantelle and her friends about finding contacts online and getting to play around. Marie casually mentions a party she’s having on the weekend, includes Lydia in the general discussion of it, and that’s a victory she’d normally be intensely pleased over. But holding the glamour is starting to wear on her, and she goes to the girl’s bathroom to reapply deodorant and powder, because she’s started to sweat. She’ll need to practice more in the privacy of her own bedroom, because this small thing being so much effort means she’s a long way from doing anything impressive with it. The mere fact of magic powers would have been impressive, oh, a year ago, but Lydia has standards now.

And it’s going to be no use defensively: she could do what, glitter-bomb someone to death? She needs to figure out something else.

She makes it through sixth period, barely. She has to bite the inside of her cheek hard to keep her focus. If she goes to the bathroom and lets it go, it’ll make sense to have taken her contacts out. She just needs to hold out a little longer. Staring blindly at the smartboard, she clenches her toes inside her shoes. She can do this.

Or maybe not. The smartboard shorts in a shower of multicolored sparks, then explodes.

Lydia knows her eyes are back to normal, because the snapping release of tension has left her boneless, unable, even, to be terrified of what she’s done.

Stiles is waiting for her at her locker at the end of school, and she doesn’t even question how he knows. She narrows her eyes at him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Do you need to?”

“No.” She opens her locker and takes her books and leaves him behind. She’s been doing that a lot, lately.


	26. October 25 (Thursday)

Lydia doesn’t bother taking Prada to the animal clinic this time, just has Alice from the dance committee drop her off after the meeting. Deaton knows where she stands, and if he lets Stiles show up at all hours for his training sessions, he’s not overly concerned with subtlety or surveillance.

Scott lets her through to the back, where she finds him adjusting the drip rate on a dog’s IV. “How do the Aos Si respond to wolfsbane?”

Deaton checks his watch, makes a note on a chart, and rubs the dog’s ears before he answers. “They don’t.”

She waits a beat, two. “Immunity, like to kanima venom, or off-schedule mind-control like to werewolf bites?”

“Complete immunity, as far as I’m aware.” He looks at her, in that quiet way he has.

She checks her nails, shoves her cuticle back, and asks, “So I could be taking a daily dose of it?”

She looks up in time to see his eyes widen fractionally. “Yes, theoretically.”

The question hangs unspoken, but she answers anyway. “If one of those sons of bitches wants to bite me again, I’m going to bite back.”

“I had thought you and Derek were getting along.”

Lydia tosses her hair. “Please. I don’t speak to him. But Peter bit me and Ethan threatened to, and there will inevitably be more werewolves coming through who aren’t this pack. I’m not a werewolf, so I don’t heal, and I’m not a ninja or a witch. The only thing my powers are good for is decoration. I need to make biting me something deeply, deeply regrettable.”

He nods slowly. “I could do that.”

“Will you?” He makes her uncomfortable with his evasions.

“Yes. I’ll have some capsules for you tomorrow. But you’re three-quarters human, so I want you to stop if anything seems strange after a few days.”

She laughs. “My life is already strange. See you tomorrow.”

As she turns to leave, he calls, “Use the back door tomorrow.”

She walks to her mother’s office with a victorious smile on her face.


	27. October 26 (Friday)

She picks up the prescription bottle and hesitates. “What do I owe you?”

He smiles, hands wrapped up in a towel. “We’re both friends of Scott’s. We need to be able to help each other out when circumstances call for it.”

Dammit. She should have negotiated price first. She’s not comfortable with some nebulous favor hanging over her head. In addition to the crushing, terrifying weight of what obligations might mean now, it’s also tackily Godfather.


	28. October 27 (Saturday)

She spends the morning walking Prada, reading up on Gaelic, and practicing changing the color of her eyes. She moves on to her skin, and gets rippling cloudscapes flowing over her ulna and then stops, sweating and tired.

Later, she does her makeup for the party with a mix of mundane means and glamour, making her eyeshadow shimmer in a way it didn’t when it came out of the box. She’s practiced enough that she’s pretty sure she can release it when it gets to be too much without any pyrotechnics. She looks good, in a satisfying way, her lips a predatory red.

She smooths her dress down and slips on her heels and goes down to where her ride is waiting: she hasn’t kept him too long, because everything’s still a little shaky. He smiles when she comes down the stairs, at least partly in relief that he doesn’t have to speak to her mother anymore. “Let’s go,” she says.

Her mother says, “Remember, curfew is one a.m..”

“Of course.” She’s actually been coming home for curfew, this semester. Her mother called the Sheriff’s office the first time she stayed over with Allison in September and didn’t call home.

He drives her to Marie’s, picking up two other people on the way, and swears up and down that he won’t be drinking. Lydia spots Erica and is relieved that she’ll have a ride when he inevitably gets fall-down drunk.

Marie gestures her vaguely towards the living room when she sees her, and Lydia finds an impromptu bar set up. She pours herself a vodka, straight, and throws it back, and then makes herself something else, something pink and kind of fruity, and starts to make the rounds.

She makes out with a guy, and he’s built and she recognizes him vaguely from some kind of team. It’s fun, and she likes the way he feels when he presses her into the wall, and she’s starting to really enjoy herself when, abruptly, she’s not: she’s bored, and wants to go do something else immediately. She peels his head away from her neck and drops the leg that was wrapped around the back of his. He takes the hint and backs off and looks at her curiously.

She smiles tightly at him and pats him on the pectoral. “I should go fix my lipstick.”

He steps away from her. “Okay.”

She gets herself another drink, just a lot of vodka with a splash of grenadine, and finds Erica so they can bitch about people’s outfits. Allison isn’t here, off on some hunter training weekend, and she needs to be around people who are known quantities. She and Erica are probably the two hottest girls here, even if Erica’s still rocking bordello-chic, and it’s fun watching people visibly consider coming up to hit on them and then lose their nerve.

At some point she gets sloppily drunk, enough to lean comfortably against Erica. She feels louche, and quite content with the world, and a little sick to her stomach. It’s a good night.


	29. October 28 (Sunday)

On Sunday, Lydia is hungover. Her entire day revolves around this fact.


	30. October 29 (Monday)

She takes her first wolfsbane pill with her birth control in the morning, and enjoys the fact that she’ll be dangerous whether or not she ever manages to find a way to use glamour or the fairy rings in an offensive way. She has a last resort in case her flamethrower fails, so that she doesn’t have to rely on anyone else.

Allison comes back from hunter training with a bruise high on her back, one that’s not hidden at all by her sweater. It’s tacky. Lydia confiscates her concealer and covers it up for her. “So what caused this?” she asks, lips pursed.

“It was just training,” Allison says, and shrugs, dislodging Lydia.

“Isn’t that just supposed to be a workout? Unpleasant hiking through the woods with mosquitos, shooting innocent squirrels through the eye?”

Allison smoothes one finger over her eyebrow, examining herself in the mirror. “We were doing hand to hand, mostly. They figure I can practice archery at home, since people already know I like it.”

Lydia frowns, and blends the concealer to the side. “Great. So a bunch of older men took you out to the woods and beat you up. That doesn’t sound terrible at all.”

Allison smiles in the mirror, and reaches back to grab Lydia’s hand and squeeze. “Hey, you should see the other guy. I can hold my own. I’m not weak.”

“I know,” Lydia says, squeezing back. Allison has weaknesses - critical thinking, the gaping hole where her heart used to be - but she’s more physically competent than Lydia will ever be, more than she has any interest in being.

She hands Allison back her concealer as the first bell rings.

-

The guy she made out with at the party - Wyatt? - smiles and tries to catch her eye as she’s leaving Calculus, but she ignores him. He’s not a very good distraction, not from any of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously this is canon-divergent Lydia: she hasn't had any fun distractions like boys because she's had not-fun distractions like setting the alpha pack on fire and wondering what species she is in a much more pressing way. Her stressors are different, so parts of her reaction are different.


	31. October 30 (Tuesday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter to go!

The wolves all look tense, predatory. Even Boyd has his edges out, though they amount to a deeply judgemental “Really?” when someone’s an idiot in Calculus.

The second floor girls bathroom ends up with a sink broken off the wall and water everywhere. Lydia doesn’t look at Erica when she hears about it at lunch.

It’s the Hunter’s Moon, and the bestiary says it can take bitten wolves years to hone their control, so Lydia just avoids them and sits deliberately away from Chantelle so that she and Allison can go over what she’s going to wear.

She remembers, belatedly, to text Todd that they’re leaving from her house tomorrow at eight, and then tries to pretend to be normal for an afternoon.

She doesn’t go to her fathers’.


	32. October 31 (Wednesday)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, we're done! It's been an unexpectedly long road, but thanks to everyone who stuck it out reading it as a WIP.
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](http://uswe.tumblr.com/), come and talk to me.

Halloween dawns cold, and Lydia wears a leather jacket and gloves like armor. The wolves are all wrecked, in the morning, and Stiles looks like shit, too, and they need to stop having really aggressive orgies or whatever it is that they do.

Her locker sparkles hard until she glares it into submission.

At lunch, they’re talking about the Halloween party someone has planned, and Lydia waves a hand. “Oh, I have this family thing this year. Total pain, but worth it if Daddy finally gets me that car.”

“Are you sure you want to, Lydia? You could still come with us.” Allison, for all her protestations of her own strength, remains convinced that Lydia is weak and needs protecting.

“Yes, Allison,” she says sharply. “It’s just family. Mine, at least, is harmless.”

Allison’s face shutters. Silence falls momentarily, and then Chantelle titters nervously, like she’s not sure if she’s allowed to find jokes about the serial killer aunt funny. Lydia smiles, mean and meaning it.

Allison grabs her tray and stands. “Fine. You know how to reach me if you need to.”

Lydia almost regrets going for the easy target, but she’s so utterly tired of people trying to keep her away from things for her own protection. The afternoon stretches and bends, minutes dragging on forever and the end of school coming too soon. She gets a ride home from Allison, both of them stubbornly silent the whole way.

Getting dressed for this particular party, Lydia takes more time and care than usual. Only one dress, because she doesn’t know if there’ll be anywhere to change, and so it has to be perfect. She’d gone over it with Allison, gone shopping for this in particular, and she’s still not a hundred percent on her decision to go with the lilac silk. But it looks good, and goes well with her shoes. She does her hair up, something fussy with curls tumbling loose. Her makeup is subtle, understated, and perfect: she’s still not sure of the dress code, not really, but in this outfit she’d be comfortable very nearly anywhere.

Todd shows up at her house at half past seven, tells her mother that they’re going out to a haunted house with an easy smile. It makes it easy to go outside with him, where he explains, “My brother says you’re my ride, now?”

Lydia takes a deep breath. “I guess so.”

They walk down the driveway to the fairy ring, and Lydia’s acutely aware that her mother could be watching out the window. She wills the ring to open, to become a gate to Faerie. Nothing. She tries glaring at the rings, but that doesn’t work either. Nothing works until she tries consciously and hard to relax, to let it feel like something she’s already in control of rather than something to fight against. Her father had likened it to a muscle, so she tries to picture it that way.

The world twitches, and the sky she can see over the fairy ring is teal. A dark shape moves in the shadows, slipping through the fairy ring, and Todd steps through, too, smiling reassuringly at her. She steps through, too, 

The whole sky has gone teal, and the grass is brightest emerald under her feet. Creatures look at her in passing as they flock to a pavilion in colors too vivid to be properly named. Trepidation’s coiling her stomach, so Lydia lifts her chin and walks to the pavilion.

Todd is there, and looks like he’s been there a while. He’s far more disheveled than he should be, given his thirty second lead. He smiles brightly when he sees her, and leaves the man he was talking to. “Let me present you to the Queen.”

He leads her deeper into the pavilion, which is somehow many-roomed and marble-floored. Most of the other guests are distinctly inhuman, strange-eyed and furred or winged, but some are tall and willowy and just a step away. They’re dressed like they’ve been raiding the Game of Thrones costume department.

He leads her to a room with a throne that shines like ice, and the woman sitting on it is easily six feet tall, green-eyed and with strawberry blonde hair. She smiles like a predator. “I had wondered if you’d ever make your way here.”

“I wasn’t made aware it was an option,” Lydia says, and presses her lips together.

“Grandson,” the woman says reprovingly.

Todd bows floridly, apology radiating from him.

“I hear, though, that you plan to take the Hunt.” The woman is wearing those filigreed gold claw-tip rings, and the points of them look damp and menacingly green. Wearing poison to a party seems excessive.

This is a trap. “I said maybe,” Lydia says sharply. The only person she’s planning on killing is Peter, and that’ll be on her own terms. Taking the Hunt - having her werewolf friends referred to as dogs in any context but Stiles’ bad jokes - is distasteful. Deliberately signing up to live in a liminal space is a terrible idea, and she refuses to do it.

The woman taps a ring against the throne. “‘Maybe.’ And yet I’m told you hold the rings, which was the first step of the plan.”

Lydia smooths her hands down the sides of her dress. “It seemed a practical consideration. I’d like to know what’s coming from at least one avenue. That doesn’t mean I’ll be visiting.” She takes a deep breath. “But if I do, I want a guarantee that I’ll be safe.”

She makes some small hand signal, and a man with green skin brings in a tray with two wineglasses on it and offers one to Lydia. Lydia takes it, and takes a sip. It tastes of apples and sunlight. The woman drinks deeply of hers, and gestures both Todd and the man to leave. “There is no guarantee that I can offer, as the Hunt is what keeps threats in check. But I can assure you that you’ll come to no harm from your family, and this is what we are, here.”

“Family shouldn’t lie.”

“Family always lies. Harm and trickery are not the same, but you can walk out of here whenever you like.” The woman settles back against her throne, the sourceless light casting icy reflections up at her. She gestures permission for Lydia to leave, too, and Lydia turns on her heel to stalk out. “Enjoy the party,” the woman calls after her.

The apple wine must be stronger than it tastes, because by the time she’s finished her first glass, Lydia’s nerves and rage are both evaporated. The various Fae are interesting, unfailingly polite to her and curious as to why she’s not come before. The raw hurt of denial fades with repetition of the story, and eventually Lydia finds herself tucked in a corner discussing dead human languages with something with five eyes and no mouth.

No one else asks if she’ll take the Hunt, though three congratulate her on holding the rings now. She’s being allowed, for once in her life, to hold on to only those things she wants to, and not made to take on any more. Everything is vivid hypersaturated colours and ephemeral music, and Lydia drifts through it dreamlike. And, dreamlike, she’ll take pieces of it with her when she wakes.


End file.
